


The Fragile

by Loki_Demon



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Depression, F/M, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Minor Character Death, Panic Attacks, Suggestions of underage sex with other underage people, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 08:12:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5367980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loki_Demon/pseuds/Loki_Demon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If I could fix myself I-I’d…but it’s too late for me</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fragile

**Author's Note:**

> This is dedicated to me and my incredible morbid sadness. I also didn't proofread even the tiniest bit because the errors are thematic, you know?

Regulus had contemplated suicide at length and in depth. It was a fascinating prospect, and he had it all figured out by the age of 9. When he committed suicide it would be like a hole in the universe–a hole that had always been there, creeping closer and shadow stepping behind him until was biting on his ankles and whispering in his ear–it would be like that hole in the universe finally caught up to him and swallowed him whole. And when it had done its job, the hole would close, whisper silent.

Regulus’ suicide would not leave a feeling of absence in the universe. His suicide would fill a hole that had always been there, pulling at the hearts of his friends, family, loved ones, and minor acquaintances. His death would make them feel whole and safe and at peace. His suicide would be the closure that everyone, himself included, had waited with baited breathe for.

______________________________________________________________

He was 9 and a half when he had his first panic attack, lying in bed, nearly paralyzed with fear of his own weakness. The evidence of his incompetence as a human lay spilled all over his bed and the FEAR of discovery burst out of him in gasping breaths and racing heart beats and a disconnect with the fabric of reality.

In the 9 years since, panic had brought him to his knees dozens of times. Panic tore apart little pieces of his soul and ate away at the remains of his sanity and zeal. Panic swallowed his metaphysical being long before suicide consumed his physical self.

Most people, Regulus was given to believe, were terrified of death. He stood now before the horrific consequence of one man’s fear of facing his own mortality and he had a mark on his arm to remind him of the power of an existential fear of death. He was branded as a member of the Death Eaters, who fought back against terror of the unknown existence beyond the veil with sacrifices of the lives and liberty of others, as if they were sending out the unworthy as scouts, waiting for reconnaissance before they met their own end. Regulus was a Death Eater, but he had never truly been one of them.

It was human nature to fear death. But there was something broken in him, broken in his brother, broken in his bloodline, that skirted human nature. Regulus could never grasp the concept of fear of death. It was a fear of life that drove him onwards.

______________________________________________________________

Sirius had been the source of much of his panic when he was young. Regulus feared his mother with an all-consuming awe, but any concern for his own well-being had been forcefully removed from him at an early age. Regulus feared only for his family, both its individual members and the blessed name of the House of Black. And Sirius incited the most terror in him.

When Sirius was 11 he went off to Hogwarts and made friends with blood-traitors and half-bloods and, as it later turned out, half-humans. He wasn’t there for their mother’s actual physical rage, but Regulus was. From September to December Regulus bathed in the fury of Walburga Black, who had become accustomed to using her youngest son as a scapegoat for her own perceived failures as a mother. Regulus knew exactly how outraged Sirius had made their mother and he feared for Sirius.

The day Sirius returned home for Christmas break, Regulus couldn’t force down food. He was terrified that their mother was going to kill Sirius. Sirius laughed at him and told him to stop being a baby.

Sirius always laughed at Regulus for his fear when they were younger. Sirius, as the oldest, had the blessed ability to live his life without fear. Like Regulus, Sirius had never understood a fear of death, but it was not because he feared life instead. He feared nothing, and that was why Regulus feared for him.

Sirius lived on the wild side. He laughed in the face of danger. Hahaha.

______________________________________________________________

Sirius showed up at Hogsmeade around the holidays during Regulus’ sixth year at Hogwarts. He looked distinctly uncomfortable as he walked into Three Broomsticks, running his hands through his hair. Regulus couldn’t remember the last time he had seen Sirius look so out of place. He made his excuses to his friends as he met his brother’s eyes and walked over, but Hope Caldwell beat him to it.

Regulus grimaced he ran up to Sirius to hug him. Sirius swung Hope around and she giggled before he put her back down, all traces of discomfort lost from his face, which now bore a smile that made Regulus want to punch him in the face. Since when had they been friends? As far as he knew, Hope and Sirius hated each other, but then Regulus was well aware of what Hope did with men she hated.

Regulus wandered if Sirius knew that Hope had once been his, and if that was why Sirius was being so friendly to her now. He wandered if she had slept with him, if she giggled like that when he–heart wrenched from his body he walked up to them with a cool, emotionless expression hiding his anger and fear and said, “What are you doing here?” He looked only at Sirius. He didn’t even spare Hope a glance.

“Well, isn’t that a lovely way to greet your brother,” Sirius said, laughter in his voice.

Regulus narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing here, brother?”

Before Sirius could respond, Hope cut in. “Hi Regulus.”

Regulus ignored her and continued to glare at Sirius. “Oh you two know each other?”

Regulus clenched his jaw and hardened his stare. He could practically feel the disingenuity oozing out of Sirius’ voice, still alight with undertones of amusement at the whole situation. “Do we know each other?!” a half-scream hovering at his lips declared. “Are you kidding me?! She’s MINE! Not yours.” 

Nothing was ever really his though. Everything was always Sirius’.

Hope giggled again, smiled at Sirius. Bit her lip. “Yes, of course, I know Rex,” she said as she playfully hit Sirius on the shoulder.

“He doesn’t seem to know you.”

“Ah, he has eyes only for you, my dear,” Hope replied and giggled again for a total of three disgustingly flirty noises made at Sirius in the past minute.

Sirius made a face. “Our family isn’t quite like that. Give it a few generations.”

Regulus knew what was going to happen next. He knew it because he knew Sirius was setting up for it, he had seen him flirt 10,000 times before. He knew it because he saw the twinkle in Hope’s eyes. He knew it because he knew the soft tinkling noise she made when she was truly delighted and unequivocally, without a doubt, down to fuck. He knew it, but that didn’t mean it didn’t rip his heart out to hear it all the same. He pulled his brother by the arm and dragged him out of Three Broomsticks with the sound of Hope’s laugh ringing in his ears.

“Well that was rather rude.”

“What the fuck are you doing here Sirius?”

Sirius shook his head. “What are you doing here? The Three Broomsticks? Rather an odd choice to have your little Death Eater meetings.”

Regulus didn’t bother denying it. He and Sirius had already made their paths clear. “It’s noisy enough here, no one hears what you’re saying. And besides. Everyone knows the Hog’s Head is run by Dumbledore’s brother. So it’s here or Madam Puttifoot’s and really, which is more mal à propos?”

Sirius blinked. Grinned. Laughed. “What? Where do you come up with these words?”

“Grow up.”

“Never saw a reason to. You seem to have though. Are you really with them? The Death Eaters?” Regulus nodded grimly and watched as the light drained out of Sirius’ expression. “I thought I might catch you before…”

“Before what? Before you left me to fend for myself with her? You might have done if you’d any mind to.”

There was a look of genuine hurt in Sirius’ eyes and Regulus gloried in it. He had grown accustomed of delighting in the pain of others and nothing pleased him more than bringing the man who had made him feel inferior to his knees. “I’m sorry, Rex,” Sirius murmured. “I thought there was still time for you.”

A thin, faded voice locked up inside Regulus whimpered out desperately “There is still time for me! Siri! Please don’t throw me away again. Don’t give up!” It was swallowed with a look of pure disgust. Regulus had learned to keep his emotions in check and learned it from none other than Sirius himself. As Hope walked up to them, a look of desire still adding a sparkle to her eye and a tint to her cheeks, Regulus turned on his heel and walked back to the castle, despair settling in the pit of his stomach.

______________________________________________________________

Hope Caldwell’s body was found in early October, exactly two months after Regulus’ 18th birthday. It took them another week to find and decode the note, but they knew from the start it was suicide and not a Death Eater attack because it was a muggle poison that killed her. It was if she wanted to openly declare that she was dying by her own doing to the entire magical world. “By my own hand be it.”

Sirius cried the night that he found out. Regulus knew this because he had taken to sneaking into Sirius’ flat, just to check to make sure that he was still alive, still safe. It wasn’t the first time he had seen Sirius cry on one of these clandestine visits (Stop being such a baby) but it was the first time that he had to choke back tears of his own (who’s the baby now?)

And it wasn’t merely because Sirius crying confirmed what he had suspected about the nature of Sirius and Hope’s relationship. That was like a bee sting in comparison to the shrapnel lodged within the limited remains of Regulus’ emotional attachment.

____________________________________________________________

Regulus was not a baby, not as he stood here prepared to die. Regulus was a man who had seen horror, taken part in it, experienced it, and created it. He had learned to live his life behind the mask of maturity, to conceal rather than to feel, to keep everyone at an arm’s length. He had spent his entire life attempting to measure up to some ideal of manhood that his mother, father, and brother set forth for him. And he had not fallen short.

But he had also failed completely.

And he was ready, so ready for the end. He was ready for the moment that his whole life for the past nine years was gearing towards. Kreacher, who knew what was about to unfold and who knew that Regulus’ death was hardly necessary, that they might both survive this ordeal, was whimpering slightly beside him, forbidden from trying to convince Regulus that there was another way. Regulus had made his choice. He was ready.

He had beyond built up his suicide into a poetically romantic undertaking. He imagined a kind of morbid and deeply poignant end for himself, beautiful in the way that it was so wholly pathetic and broken. He never imagined a light at the end of the tunnel, but he had imagined a pure and unbreaking darkness. He was more than a little disappointed with the anticlimactic reality of his end.

The potion reduced him to a whimpering mess, screaming out the names of the people he had begged to love him in his life and pleading for mercy. It reignited the FEAR, the intoxicating and ever present fear that he had so successfully learned to swallow and hide. The fear was now at the surface and he wasn’t entirely present, wasn’t entirely aware at the end, but her was entirely consumed with terror.

Rather than being bathed in the tragic turmoil of a hard-lived life, he bathed in tears, sweat, and blood spilled from scratching at his skin and scalp. And rather than leaving an unbearable hole in the world when he finally drowned in the Inferi infested waters, a hole left the world with him.


End file.
